Connecting New Media and the Political Unconscious

In two podcasts this week I have had the delightful opportunity to talk with colleagues from two distinct worlds about themes ranging from the political unconscious to new media.
Early this week Brad Rourke, whom I know through our mutual association with the Kettering Foundation, engaged me in a conversation on the subject of his own [...]

Discerning Media

I spent part of yesterday and today in meetings at the Kettering Foundation thinking about media and democracy. These conversations still, to my chagrin, keep getting tangled up with the debate about old school journalism versus new media.  I’ve blogged about this debate before. But I keep coming back to these meetings because I think [...]

Execution Style

No doubt John Allen Muhammad was a sociopath and a  murderer.  I only wish that we as a society might be better than that.  I’m sick to my stomach that our collective way of dealing with such sick, sociopathic murderers is to murder them back and in the process model killing as a way to [...]

Twenty years ago today…

It was twenty years ago today that….  How do you finish that sentence?  There are plenty obvious ways:
…that the wall came down.
…that the Cold War ended.
…that Communism failed.
…that capitalism (or was it democracy?  or are these even interchangeable?) triumphed.
blah blah blah
Okay, it was some of all of that, though with Slavoj Zizek I agree that [...]

The Mismeasure of Woman

On today’s New York Times op-ed page, financial editor Joanne Lipman asks how it is that women finally make up half the work force and are the major breadwinner in 40 percent of families and yet are still treated as either witches or bimboes.

Op-Ed Contributor
The Mismeasure of Woman
By JOANNE LIPMAN
Published: October 24, 2009

Somewhere along the [...]

Women in Philosophy

Kathryn Norlock of St. Mary’s College notes some interesting pieces that have sprung up all at once about the situation of women in philosophy.  Took them a while…
Here’s her post, copied with her permission from a message sent to the Society for Women in Philosophy email list:
Philosophers,
It’s a great day when the Philosopher’s Magazine, the [...]

Town Hall Democracy?

Here’ s a recipe for debate rather than deliberation.  Throw a town hall meeting and put a politician in the middle of the room.  In that setting, the people generally come to blame and beseech.  They don’t come to do the political work of deliberation, which is to ask themselves, on whatever the issue at [...]

Digital Dialogue on Democracy and the Political Unconscious

My book Democracy and the Political Unconscious is the subject of a podcast by Christopher Long’s  Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue:
Cultivating a Politics of Dialogue in a Digital Age.
In episode 8 of the Digital Dialogue, I am joined by Shannon Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy, Women’s Studies and African and African American Studies here at Penn [...]

Civil Society, or the Public Sphere?

I am ready to come clean with my worry about these two terms, “civil society” and “the public sphere.”  My political theorists friends (trained in political science departments) act and talk as if the difference between the two is patently obvious.  I just nod, a bit hesitant to admit that I don’t quite get it. [...]

Random Summer Thoughts

1. It’s odd that no one paid attention to the adjective “wise” in Sotomayor’s comment, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.” If “wise” means anything, then all she said was a tautology.
2. It’s good that some companies are [...]